On Staten Island, mom and kin keep the faith for young Patrick Alford

Advance file photoJennifer Rodriguez, 23, holds a photograph of her son, Patrick Alford in this file photo. Last night, at a vigil for the missing 7-year-old New Brighton boy held at Mount Sinai United Christian Church in Tompkinsville, which Jennifer’s aunt Brenda Ortiz attends, the Rev. Dr. Victor A. Brown helped Jennifer and several family members keep that hope alive by taking to Pike Street and locking hands in a prayer circle.

“We believe in the power of prayer,” Rev. Brown said. “We know what prayer can do. “I don’t think at this point the family has reason to give up hope,” the minister added.

After four months, hope is all they have left.

Hope ... and so many prayers, you wonder how God manages to keep up.

“I’m still devastated,” Jennifer said. “I’m depressed. I just want him to come home.”

“This has been very emotional for us,” said Brenda Ortiz. “There are no leads. The whole family is torn apart. There are no answers.”

There should not even have been a question, not when the avowed priority of the city Administration for Children’s Services is to try to place the child with family first.

ACS did nothing of the kind when it stripped Jennifer of custody of Patrick and his 4-year-old sister, Jailene, after Jennifer was arrested in December for shoplifting.

Patrick told the ACS caseworker he wanted to go with his father, Patrick Alford Sr. Jennifer “begged” ACS to put both kids with their father.

If the father couldn’t take them, there were plenty of family members — Brenda Ortiz, aunt Claudia Ortiz, even Jennifer’s mother, Debra Ortiz — who could have taken in both kids until Jennifer got back on her feet.

According to the ACS caseworker’s report, Jennifer’s pleas and Patrick’s expressed wishes to be with his dad fell on deaf ears because she lied in court that Alford Sr.’s girlfriend abused her children.

“Unfortunately that lie [Ms. Rodriguez] told in court is keeping the children in foster care,” the ACS caseworker wrote in the report, “and only the judge can determine what happens next.”

With former St. George Family Court Judge Terrence McElrath’s blessing, ACS dragged Patrick and Jailene out to Brooklyn’s Spring Creek Development in Starrett City to live with a stranger, a foster mother named Librada Moran.

Patrick didn’t want to be there. Every time he spoke with his family on the phone, he pleaded to come home, his grandma Debra Ortiz said a couple of months ago.

On Jan. 22, when it became obvious that nobody was going to let the little boy go home to his family, Patrick made a run for it.

Ms. Moran told police she and Patrick were taking trash downstairs to the lobby of her building. She said she took a call on her cell phone and ... poof, Patrick was gone.

That’s her story.

Little Jailene had her own version: She said her brother took out the trash that night.

Why believe a 4-year-old over an adult? Because it doesn’t make sense for Ms. Moran to lug her trash down 11 flights to a bin in the lobby when a trash outlet was located next to her apartment. She had only to walk a couple of feet outside her door and toss it down the chute.

It’s a moot point now. Jailene lives with her father and Patrick hasn’t been seen since.

Police haven’t given up hope any more than Jennifer has. Last month, they scoured 1,000 acres of woods and marshland near Howard Beach in Queens, not far from where Patrick was last seen, after one of their dogs picked up Patrick’s scent on the ground.

There were no signs of Patrick. But the old adage, no news is good news, sustained the family.